Title

Author

Date of Award

8-1975

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Department

Psychology

Abstract

Thirty-six fourth grade students were selected and classified into one of three groups on the basis of participation in the DISTAR Reading Program, educational ability as measured by the STEA and a reading readiness factor, Each group received two tests of short term memory (STM ) involving auditory presentation and either auditory or visual recall after a retention interval of 4, 8 or 12 seconds. Analysis verified previous research in this area with respect of task difficulty, retention as a function of interval length and acoustic similarity of response errors. Neither educational ability nor practice elevated the students' performance on the STM tasks.